Poverty

What led Prairie Cutting (now Sister Confianza del Señor) & Beth Blodgett (now Sister Alegria del Señor) to leave the USA & create the Methodist-Quaker Amigas del Señor Monastery in Honduras? One key motivation was a calling to lead a life of poverty, explained in an article in Western Friend called Overcoming Need.

James O'Dea's latest book is The Conscious Activist: Where Activism Meets Mysticism, and he stands as an expert with a foot solidly in each camp. In addition to his 10 years as director of Amnesty International's Washington office, James has been President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and CEO of the Seva Foundation. He is also lead faculty for the Shift Network's Peace Ambassador Training.

Sonny Ochs, sister to folk legend Phil Ochs, has helped carry forward the powerful legacy of Phil's music. On almost every topic - war, prejudice, immigration, etc - the songs are as meaningful today as back in the 60-70's. Just released, the documentary, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune.

Linda Stout is the activist/author of Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future and founder of Spirit In Action, a non-profit organization that catalyzes broad-based movement building to support deep and lasting social change.

2 guests consider whether govt can do Spirit work on Earth. Jason Penn Browne, author of William Penn's Legacy, writes about the many ways that Penn's Holy Experiment influenced the development of the USA. Julia Ryberg has lived in Sweden for 30+ years, experiencing a progressive system based on the entwining of church & state.

Missionary doing holistic development in Rwanda? To a lot of folks almost any other destination might have seemed preferable to God's call for Debby & David Thomas to become missionaries in Rwanda just after the genocide of1994.

But they obeyed, and both have found profound work in the course of their 10 years there, Debby with a call to energy alternatives, sustainable agriculture and transformational development.